ZOE Science & Nutrition - Most replayed moment: Coffee vs Matcha | Andrew Kojima & Prof Tim Spector

Episode Date: April 14, 2026

Today, we’re diving into some popular drinks. Coffee has long been the undisputed champion of hot beverages. Its bitter taste is an essential part of most people's morning. However, there’s a new kid on the block. You might have seen its distinctive green hue cropping up in cafés, supermarkets or even TikTok. I am of course talking about matcha. So how do coffee and matcha compare? Do they work differently in the body? And is one better for your long-term health? I’m joined by matcha expert Andrew Kojima and Professor Tim Spector to explore the science behind our daily pick-me-ups - and discover whether we should be switching sides. 🌱 Try our science-backed and tasty wholefood supplement Daily 30+ Get our brand-new app and Gut Health Test designed by world-leading gut health and nutrition scientists to build healthy eating habits 👉 Join ZOE Follow ZOE on Instagram. 📚Books by our ZOE Scientists The Food For Life Cookbook Every Body Should Know This by Dr Federica Amati Food For Life by Prof. Tim Spector Ferment by Prof. Tim Spector Free resources from ZOE Eating for Better Brain Health: Your brain-gut blueprint How to eat in 2026 - Discover ZOE’s 8 nutrition principles for long-term health Live Healthier: Top 10 Tips From ZOE Science & Nutrition Gut Guide - For a Healthier Microbiome in Weeks  Better Breakfast Guide

Hello and welcome to Zoe Recap, where each week we find the best bits from one of our podcast episodes to help you improve your health. Today we're diving into some popular drinks. Coffee has long been the undisputed champion of hot beverages. It's bitter taste an essential part of many people's mornings. However, there's a new kid on the blog. You might have seen its distinctive green hue cropping up in cafes, supermarkets, even TikTok. I am, of course, talking about Matcha. So how do coffee and Matcha compare?

Do they work differently in the body? And is one better for your long-term health? I'm joined by Matcha expert Andrew Kajima and Professor Tim Specter to explore the science behind our daily pick-me-ups and discover whether we should be switching sides. I think one of the reasons that a lot of people listening think they drink coffee is like they wake up and they really need this energy boost and they think about coffee as this sort of source of that.

Is the experience with Matcha different? Yes, because it's got something else, apart from caffeine. It's got al-thianine. And caffeine and al-thianine work in tandem to slightly delay the caffeine release. So you still feel stimulated, but you also have this sort of sense of calmness. And when I drink it, I just feel more able to, you know, when we're being overstimulated by screens and various different ways of people contacting you messages. emails, whatever, I feel much more able to sort of pick them off one by one. I drink coffee and tea

and matcha. I see coffee as two things. One is, yeah, you know, I have the sort of Sunday morning waking up thing. I also see coffee as a social thing as, you know, it's become that over 25 years. Matcha, I'd like it to be more of a social thing, but for me it's a very personal thing. I take time out of my day to drink my matcha. I also drink coffee when when I'm doing sports, I find that's quite good. When I'm trying to focus, if I'm trying to sit and write something, I find coffee, I can feel a bit distracted by things. My mind's buzzing a bit too much. I don't find that with matcher. So that's how I differentiate when I drink coffee with matcher. Makes me think of my son who just started drinking coffee recently because my father introduced him to it on a trip,

took him to Italy and was like, well, you have to drink coffee now. And he came back and he was just sort of wired each time he had one of the morning because of course he wasn't used to it. I think so many of us have sort of got inured. And it made me run like, it's quite a real drug. Like, you know, it was like really affecting him. And he decided actually he was going to cut it out for now because it was sort of felt like it was too much. And I think that's really interesting the way you're describing against matcher. Tim, are you able to explain at all?

Yeah, so we're talking about the caffeine amounts in these different products. So you've got the green teas, which have low levels of caffeine in them, sort of 20 to 50 milligrams. Then you've got the matcher, which is the concentrated form, which has about double that 60 to 90. milligrams on average and then coffee goes to 100 to 130 milligrams. So it's a sort of gradient. So you're getting relatively less in there and black tea would be, you know, somewhere between matcha and green tea. So you've got a range of these caffeine, but we've been hearing about this other chemical, this L3anine, which does seem to counteract some of the overstimilatory effects of the caffeine on the mind. And that's why we're going to get on to some of the studies.

But, you know, it doesn't seem to affect your sleep as much as coffee. So there's another drug here that have been a different effect? Correct, yes. I mean, obviously in teas and coffees and, you know, there are hundreds of different chemicals that we're only just discovering. But these are a few that have been isolated. We think definitely have these brain effects. And so you've got these two competing effects with matcha that are really quite fascinating

to study and that, you know, you can still get some of the benefits of caffeine without it keeping you up at night and making you too wired and maybe that's why matcha seems to be taking off. I'd actually love to get into that now because I always thought it was, the only thing coffee was caffeine. And I know Tim that you co-wrote a big new paper with Zoe on this groundbreaking new research on how much coffee can actually transform our gut. And I know that you've also been reading up on the latest research on matchers. I'd love to sort of almost measure them up against each other a little bit because I think from many of our listeners, they're like, okay, how does this compare with this coffee that I'm so used to? Could you tell me about the nutritional differences

between coffee and matcher? Yes, so if we start with fiber, coffee's actually a decent source of fiber, 1.5 grams per cup. So if you're having three cups a day, getting, you know, four or five grams of fiber, about a third of the average intake in the U.S. And matcha probably has more fiber in it than coffee. It all depends on the amounts you're using. But over 50% of the matcha powder is actually fiber. So if you're putting a tablespoon in, you're going to be getting over 10 grams of fiber. So fiber is as good, if not better, than coffee. There's less caffeine relatively, but probably still enough to get you up in the morning. It has fats in it that coffee doesn't have. So it's actually a source of omega-3s and these linoleic acids, and these are all healthy fats, interestingly, that are come out.

Well, you know that these healthy fats, you know, are good for the brain, etc. 17% of it is protein. Everyone's on about protein these days, you know, relatively small amounts, but it's all good quality, you know, giving you a few grams of protein in there as well. If you take this all together, then actually, nutritionally, there's quite a lot good stuff going on. with this with this match in this concentration that seems to be pretty equivalent to to coffee given what we know I think there's lots of things we don't know well there's other chemicals are in there but interesting that the things that it has that coffee doesn't is it has this L3 anine which is this other chemical in there that seems to in studies maintain sleep quality

so people who are taking I think it's they take generally this about three grams of of matcha before we're going to bed doesn't seem to stop them sleeping as coffee would. The study shows a bit of variability between people, but that's a really encouraging sign. What I really like about matcha is that it's got similar polyphenol levels to coffee, these defence chemicals that you get from the bean or the leaf or, you know, the plant itself. And so, whereas it's more diluted in green tea, you're getting a really concentrated hit of them. and many of them we still don't understand exactly what they do, but these are great antioxidants.

Is there a reason why the matcher might be higher in these polyphenols than your average tea? Well, partly it's because more of it is seeping out into the drink. So you're actually getting extracting more of them than you would do just by dipping the leaf in. But it could also be the way they're picked and grown. So sometimes from what you're describing, it sounds like the leaf. If you're picking the sort of young leaf rather than the whole leaf, then you're getting more polyphenols than that because it's having to grow faster. It needs more defences. So sometimes just selecting the very best quality leaves will also help you there.

So some of it is the quality element. It's growing it in the partly in the dark somehow affects it? Yeah, well, maybe, you know, they have a tougher life. So, you know, again, we come back to this idea that if they're struggling to survive, that they are producing the best chemicals that make us healthy. I always love this. It makes me think about us as human beings today, that we live in this environment where for the first time in our history,

we're surrounded by food all the time, right? And our ancestors, obviously, we're constantly worrying about starvation. So at least in the West, you know, we're surrounded by food all the time, and yet, weirdly, we're sort of the least healthy we've ever been. And it makes me think of your tea leaves here, Kodd, that you're sort of causing them to suffer with the shade and all the rest of it, And then, Tim, you're telling me that actually it gives us the best polyphenols. There's something about how somehow we're not evolved to live in too good an environment.

No, that's right. We all need a bit of stress in our lives, just got to titrate it. That's what I bring you, Tim. That's why I'm here. Bring us both stress. And I know that in your recent paper you were talking about this quite significant impact that coffee was having on the gut microbiome, and this might be one of the ways in which it affects our health. Do we know anything about match and its effects, you know, beyond the sort of the stimulant that we've been talking about?

I couldn't find anything in detail on matcha. There's a little bit on green tea, but I'd love to do some studies. The problem is that matcha hasn't really been used much in the West. And so there aren't the big epidemiological studies. So we have to extrapolate a lot of it from just green tea studies. So we're guessing a lot of the work here. It's all quite new. There are a few little studies showing it does have definite benefits.

We've talked a bit about its anti-caffeine effect. So the idea of the L3anine means that you're getting decent night's sleep and sleep quality seems to be improved. Some evidence that can reduce stress, as you were suggesting it does for you, in some placebo-controlled studies. So cortisol levels dropping. So some anti-stress effect, I think, is really interesting. And some studies of elderly Japanese, quite a big study, did show cognitive improvements, particularly in the women who were taking not huge amounts, just, I think, three grams a day. So that over a 12-week period.

So I think, you know, everything is suggesting that it's working this way. Metabolic effect doesn't make you lose weight. They've done some studies on that. It's not a cure for everything. thing, but it's all pointing towards help. It's been touted as an anti-cancer drug. I couldn't find any really good evidence yet that it does that, but there's reasons theoretically suggest it would do if people were followed up and then we did bigger studies. So yeah, I like the look of matcha. It's got all the, you know, the things that we want to see in a healthy food. You know, it's made in

this artisan way that's really got no real processing in it. And it's got all these new nutrients of the plants in a really concentrated form. So, yeah, I think we're going to see more and more of it. So, Tim, what's your final assessment? Is coffee healthier than matcher? Probably we have more evidence that it's healthier at the moment. But I think matcher is great for anyone who doesn't like coffee, then that's obviously the go-to drink. And I would urge people who do drink coffee to maybe switch to also having matcha, particularly in the afternoons, etc., and start to build up that habit, because the two together look pretty unbeatable. Tim, I mean, I've done a lot of podcasts with you, and Codd, he's very rarely that positive about something.

So that's actually really interesting, because if I play it back, I think you're saying there's not a lot of scientific evidence yet on this in terms of real studies. Short-term studies, but not long-term studies. Got it. So compared to what you often like to talk about, it seems like there's still quite limited evidence, but the underlying properties of it you really like because they tie to things that you know have, really good benefits? Well, that's right, because green tea has been studied, and this is just a form of green tea. So if we accept that it's a concentrated, a high-dose form of green tea, then there's every reason to be optimistic about its health benefits. I think that's where I'm seeing. And in the last five years, there have been a number of these studies on sleep and mood and cognitive performance

that have been very encouraging. So, yeah, I'm much more positive about it than I would have been, say, four or five years ago. And my other takeaway, I think, is you probably wouldn't give up coffee for it, given the current data about the health benefits, but perhaps reducing coffee combining the two, you might be saying is a good outcome? Definitely, yes. My tea time and my British tea time drink, this could be it. And I might start having my own little tea ceremony. And particularly if it's going to be in this calming effect when you're feeling a bit uptight. So I think we can, we can use both of these potential health foods, yes. I hope you found the information in this week's episode useful.

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